


A Thousand Ways to Die

by isabeau, Miriam (isabeau)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Really old fic (pre-2000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-01-01
Updated: 2000-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabeau/pseuds/isabeau, https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabeau/pseuds/Miriam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles has far too many dreams, especially about Buffy and death.  It's pretty much not fun at all. Spoilers through the end of season two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Ways to Die

__

_// When I was young, I always dreamed of death. It was a child's  
view of death-- clumsy, absurd, unrealistic, terrifying only in the  
way that a campfire ghost story was. I remember, once, dreaming that  
a vampire killed my father. The vampire was tall and impossibly thin  
and had glowing purple eyes and batlike wings and fangs that stuck out  
like buck teeth, and he killed my father by shaking hands, and then my  
father and the vampire played chess together. I had never seen a  
vampire, at that point, nor had I seen anyone die._

 _Then I became a Watcher, and didn't need dreams in order to see death.  
I had reality. And suddenly I couldn't laugh at the vampires, and no  
one played chess afterwards; and if I dreamed, it was just a replaying  
of what had been. Faces of friends and strangers, horrified,  
blood-spattered as often as not; screaming my name, or sometimes just  
screaming. As I became used to it, the dreams went away._

 _And then I met Buffy._

 _She was the Slayer, and I'd expected...I don't know. Something other  
than what she was. The Slayer was revered in my family, raised to  
almost mythical status. As a child, told stories of Slayers past, I  
had been fascinated by the strength and agility and powers which fate  
had granted to them. (I was never told how they died; I learned that  
later, reading the diaries of those Watchers who had seen their  
Slayers die.)_

 _Buffy, though, wasn't a god, wasn't a hero. She was a frightened and  
stubborn girl, normal in any way she could be. She frustrated me, and  
she baffled me, and it wasn't long before she became as much my child  
as my Slayer._

 _Then, one night, she died.//_

He hadn't seen it coming. He couldn't have. There were no  
prophecies, no warning signals. She was patrolling alone, partly  
because he had become a bit too complacent, trusting as she did in her  
abilities. And so she died alone, and Giles found her body only after  
it was all over.

He hadn't even dreamed of this, because he hadn't thought it would  
happen. Slayers died, yes, but Buffy was too strong, too talented,  
too alive, to be killed. Numb, disbelieving, he knelt by her side,  
willing her to wake up. But she was too pale, and the blood on her  
throat around the twin holes was too dark. Giles had seen death  
before, enough that he could recognize it even when he didn't want to  
see it.

"Buffy," he whispered, touching her cold cheek with a shaking hand.  
She remained motionless, remained dead, and Giles cradled her body,  
unable to cry, unable to think.

The next morning, he went to school as always, only because the other  
option was to stay at home, miserable and alone, forced to examine and  
re-examine his failure as a Watcher. The library would remind him of  
her, but at least there were other things to distract him.

Things, he remembered a bit too late, like Willow.

"Hey," she said, a shy delighted smile on her face as she entered the  
library. "Got any more demons for me to look up on the net?"

Her voice was teasing, happy, innocent of what had happened; and Giles  
swallowed hard. He desperately didn't want to tell her, but he knew  
he had to. "Sit down."

Willow obeyed, the expression on her face melting to an earnest  
confusion. "What's wrong?"

What was the best way to say it? he wondered, feeling a bit detached  
from the situation. "I...Buffy's, um..."

He was interrupted by Buffy, skipping cheerfully in. "Hey, Giles!"  
she said, and then nearly skidded to a halt. "Oh, did I interrupt  
something?"

Giles stared at her, almost as numb as he had been the night before.  
He'd _seen_ her, drained and dead. It was as real as this was--  
more real, perhaps. Was he dreaming now, or hallucinating that which  
he wanted?

Buffy was frowning now. "Giles? You look like you've seen a ghost.  
What's up?"

"I. Um. That is..." He stammered to a halt, unable to think. She  
looked alive enough, and was behaving enough like Buffy, that she  
couldn't be dead. "Y-yes, well, I imagine I just haven't gotten  
enough sleep lately..."

"I guess." Buffy sounded dubious, not accepting that explanation much  
more than he did. "You sure you're okay? No end-of-the-world  
thingies I should be stopping?"

Giles tried to regain his composure. "No, nothing like that." _Not  
precisely_, he added silently. "Don't you two have classes to be  
going to?"

Buffy laughed. "All right, I get it. Giles is doing a personal wig  
session, and doesn't want us pesky teens around." She grinned at him.  
"C'mon, Will. Let's get to the hell that is English class."

"It's not hell," Willow protested automatically.

"It is if you listen to the teacher at all. Later, Giles!" She  
bounced out like a little blonde whirlwind, and Giles rubbed his  
head.

Buffy was alive, which would make last night's event, what-- a dream?  
It had been clear, real-feeling, more so than most of his dreams had  
been. The Watcher's histories told of the prophetic dreams which all  
Slayers had, and which some Slayers had in excessive clarity. They'd  
never spoken of a Watcher's dreams. Giles wasn't sure whether it had  
been just a projection of his fears, or whether it was something  
destined to come true.

He desperately hoped for the former. He could deal with his fears,  
but he would do anything to keep her alive.

The dream had her dying alone, unaccompanied on patrol. Clinging to  
the possibly naive belief that changing that one detail would keep it  
from coming true, Giles went with her on patrol that night. To her  
face he cited a need to examine her technique. It provided a  
convenient excuse to be there and to watch her closely.

Buffy staked several vampires with careless efficiency, and then came  
back to where he was. "So, how'd I do?" she asked, only barely  
winded.

"Hm?"

"Technique, Giles. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Oh. Yes. Right. Technique. Very good...the vampires are dead."  
And the Slayer's alive, he didn't add.

"Giles, are you _sure_ you're okay? You're awfully  
distracted."

"Yes. I'm fine." He tried to put enough force behind the words that  
she would believe him. "It's getting late, though. I think that's  
enough patrol for tonight."

"One more circuit?" she begged, and pouted, half-teasing, when he  
shook his head. "I don't get you, you're always telling me to patrol,  
and then you say not patrol..."

"Patrolling is important, but if you do too much in one night, you  
might exhaust yourself."

"Wow. Moderation." She frowned at him, fully teasing now. "Okay,  
who are you and what have you done with the real Giles?"

"Buffy," he said a bit warningly, and she grinned, completely  
unrepentant.

"So, I'm off duty now?"

"Yes."

"Cool! And I bet there's still people at the Bronze."

"Buffy-- be careful. And don't walk home alone."

She rolled her eyes at him over her shoulder. "I'm a big girl, Giles.  
And the Slayer. I can take care of myself."

"I hope so," he whispered, knowing she wouldn't hear.

That night, she died again in his dreams. It was a simple, clean  
shot, a crossbow bolt through the heart. She didn't say a word--  
didn't have a chance-- but her dead eyes stared reproachfully back at  
him. And Giles, still holding the now-empty crossbow, knew sickly  
that he deserved every bit of that reproach.

 __

 _// I didn't think, then, that I'd ever get used to the dreams, not  
entirely. I didn't think I could. Each night, I went to sleep with  
an expectant dread, and woke exhausted and shaking from the dream.  
And each night, the pain within the dream came fresh. I felt,  
sometimes, like Prometheus, healing during the day only to be torn  
apart again by a vulture at night. Only I wasn't quite sure what fire  
I'd stolen to deserve the punishment._

 _The dreams were all clear, seared into my brain as if the events  
within had actually happened. Once, she drowned; I didn't see it  
happen, but there was terror on her face. Once she was buried in a  
growing pile of dirt; I tried to dig it off of her, but by the time I  
succeeded, she had suffocated. Xander snapped her neck in the library  
when my back was turned, and afterwards he had the oddest smile on his  
face._

 _Vampires, often, were the result of her death-- one of them slit her  
throat with a knife, and lapped up the blood like a dog. Once, a  
vampire managed to twist her hand around and shove the stake through  
her heart. That vampire grinned at me and scurried away, and I awoke  
with the feel of Buffy's blood on my hands, the sound of her last  
breath rattling harshly in my ear._

 _Always a different way, always ending in death. I started to wish she  
would actually die, so that then it would be over and the dreams would  
stop; and then I despised myself for wishing that._

 _The real Buffy commented a couple times on my distraction. I couldn't  
tell her why, so I always made excuses._

 _When I saw the prophecy that she would die facing the Master, it came  
not with the shock it would have half a year earlier, but with a dull  
sort of deja-vu. I knew I needed to find some way around it, because  
I knew this time it was real; but every time I looked at her, I  
couldn't help but think of the dreams, couldn't help but see her face,  
pale in death so many times._

 _That summer, the dreams stopped. I didn't know if it was because she  
wasn't near, or if it was because I knew that death couldn't stop her.  
I didn't care; it was enough to be able to sleep through the night.  
But that meant that, the following autumn when she came back and it  
turned out that she wasn't as invulnerable as we'd thought, the dreams  
came back with a vengeance that caught me off guard._

 _So, feeling like a ten-year-old running to his father for help, I  
called an old friend of mine back in England.//_

"Dreams?" Richard Masterson asked. Even through the slightly fuzzy  
cross-Atlantic connection, Giles could hear the interest in his  
voice.

"Yes. Disturbing ones."

"Niiiice," he drawled, and then cleared his throat. "Not that I'm  
saying they're any fun, of course. But dreams are one of the most  
fascinating realms...every night, you said?"

"Pretty much. I don't remember any from over the summer, though."

"But they started when your Slayer came back?" Richard wasn't a  
Watcher as such, but he was a friend of the 'family', and knew about  
Slayers and Watchers and vampires.

"Within a day or two, yes. The first dream," he admitted sheepishly,  
"was perhaps a bit ludicrous. She was standing in the library, and a  
shelf full of books suddenly flew at her, hard enough to kill. No  
force behind them that I could tell, and no obvious poltergeist. But  
the dreams...I can't laugh about them. Last night, someone strangled  
her with her own scarf, and left her on her doorstep for her mother to  
find. Two nights ago, a witch-- I'm not sure who-- cast a spell that  
turned her blood to wine. And so on."

"Huh. And there isn't any pattern?"

"Not really, other than her death. And the fact that it hurts each  
time. Dammit, Richard, I thought that-- from what the Council always  
said, it sounded like having a Slayer was like having a really  
talented weapon. If it breaks, you just get another one and move on.  
But that's not the way it works! And I don't..." Giles stopped  
awkwardly as his voice broke.

"You don't want her to die?" Richard finished quietly. "I know. Or,  
at least, I gathered that. That's probably why you're having the  
dreams, Rupert. Your subconscious is augmenting your fear and turning  
it into something that feels real...and something that you are able,  
psychologically, to deal with, in a setting that isn't permanent. She  
can die, but the next morning she won't be dead."

Giles closed his eyes. It was a believable explanation, but there was  
a part of him that was, quite calmly, saying how wrong it was.  
"Maybe," he said, "but my instinct is that it's more..."

Richard was silent for a long time, and Giles started to grow worried.  
"If these dreams are prophetic, I need to know. I can't defend  
against something if I don't know that it needs defending against."

"There isn't any record of a Watcher having prophecy dreams." Richard  
was speaking slowly; his reluctance was clear. "But Pleis spoke of a  
thousand fires-- of a thousand days of torment for the one who holds  
the key. And Watchers have written of being disturbed in their sleep  
for...for years at a time, often."

A thousand days would be a bit under three years. Giles nodded  
wearily. "Does it say what happens after the thousand fires?"

"No. Rupert, this may not even apply to you."

"But it might," Giles said grimly. "Thank you..."

"Take care," Richard said.

Giles ran a hand through his hair. A thousand fires-- a thousand  
dreams-- a thousand ways for her to die. And at the end...

"At the end," he said aloud, grimly, "she will still be alive." They  
were, after all, only dreams.

 __

 _// Angel turned to Angelus, and the dreams got that much worse.  
She died in front of my eyes, many times-- though I couldn't ever stop  
it. A fire elemental, free and far too cranky, decided to vent its  
anger on her; she burned alive, writhing silently. Snakes dropped  
from the skies and swarmed over her; each individual bite might not  
have been fatal, but after a hundred, not even the Slayer could  
survive their poison. Once she was flayed alive; she staggered to on  
my doorstep, her flesh bloody and raw, her desperate eyes the only  
part of her that looked like Buffy. Someone that I think might have  
been Angelus caught her, tied her to my bed, and performed a careful  
vivisection that kept her alive until I'd returned. After that one, I  
burned my sheets, even though I knew it hadn't been real._

 _Some of the dreams I didn't even remember after waking; perhaps they  
were distressing enough that my mind blocked them. If they were that  
much worse, I'm glad I didn't remember them. But it wasn't that I  
didn't have the dreams, on those nights-- I woke up feeling the same,  
horror and guilt and pain and fear and dread all combining into one  
sickening ball in my stomach._

 _I still couldn't tell Buffy; at this point, there was the additional  
factor that she would blame herself for the dreams, as she blamed  
herself for Angel being Angelus. When she left for the summer, I  
worried for her, but hoped-- vainly, as it turned out-- that the  
dreams would lessen._

 _They didn't, of course.//_

Willow stopped by Giles' house, not for the first time that summer.  
He suspected, despite her protests, that she was doing it mainly to  
check on him.

"I just like your company," she said, trying to look innocent. "And  
since school's out, we don't use the library, so I go to your  
house."

"Indeed." Giles almost smiled. Willow didn't lie terribly well; she  
got jittery and her ears turned red.

"So...uh...How are you doing?" she asked, with an attempt at being  
casual. "I mean, with...with everything that's happened..."

"I'm surviving," he said quietly. "I..." He stopped, hesitated, then  
decided to tell her. "I've been having dreams. About Buffy."

Willow's eyes grew wide. "Like seeing where she is and stuff?"

"Not actually...they take place here, when I can identify the  
location. And I don't think the events I'm dreaming about are  
actually occurring." They couldn't be; no one, not even the Slayer,  
could die that many times.

"Oh. So it's not some sort of psychic Watcher-Slayer connection?"  
She sounded almost disappointed.

"I'm afraid not."

"'Cause that would have been cool. You could, like, keep an eye on  
her, even if it's not a literal eye..." Willow grew quiet. "She's  
gonna be okay, Giles. And she'll come back. She has to."

"Yes," Giles said, but it didn't seem to help. If he didn't know  
where to look for her, how would he know if she died? Would the  
dreams stop, or would they just keep going indefinitely? And, he  
wondered a bit morbidly, would his subconscious run out of ways she  
could die?

He realized with a start that Willow had said something, and made a  
noncommittal noise. She seemed to think that was an acceptable  
response, though her eyes were dark with worry.

"If I can do anything to help..." she offered, quietly. "Maybe a  
spell to ward off the dreams, or something?"

"The offer is appreciated, but I don't think that'll be necessary."  
Giles smiled as best he could.

That night, Willow, also, died in the dream. She was doing a spell on  
Buffy, as best Giles could figure; but the spell was too strong, and  
killed her midway through. The main force of the spell had been cast,  
but a few qualifying bindings had been left out; unchecked, the spell  
ripped Buffy's soul from her body, which collapsed in a glittering  
pile of dust.

 __

 _// The dreams kept coming, even after Buffy returned. A bottle of  
holy water broke in her pocket, and seared her flesh like that of a  
vampire; she died, quivering, with most of her gut eaten away.  
Several times, she became a vampire herself, and had to be killed; the  
worst of those was when she showed up after patrol, cheerfully  
oblivious to the demon she carried, and I had to stake her, and watch  
the confused betrayal linger in her eyes even as she turned to dust.  
The following night, the same thing happened, except that when I  
staked her, she died like a human._

 _I thought, perhaps, that I was going mad._

 _I'd forgotten, until much later, what Richard said, about the thousand  
days of fire. A thousand days is roughly two and three-quarters  
years. It can feel like a lifetime. It can also not be long enough.  
If I'd remembered, I would have worried as the end of the thousand  
days approached. If this was indeed what Pleis spoke of, the end of  
the thousand fires could have meant simply an end to dreams, or it  
could have meant that what they foretold would actually occur. I  
didn't think about it, and wouldn't have known. I still don't know.  
It could, after all, have just been coincidence...//_

It was, oddly for a Slayer, a death during daylight. She'd fought one  
of the demons that could walk in the light, and killed it; at which  
point, Willow babbled, too much in shock even to cry, the demon's mate  
had come. It killed her almost instantly with a blow to the head, and  
had then eaten the dead demon's body and left.

Giles didn't listen to most of the explanation. He knelt by Buffy's  
body, stroking her hair lightly, ignoring the bruising and the cuts  
from the Slayer's last fight. "I'm sorry," he said, taking her limp  
hand and squeezing it lightly. "I'm so very sorry..." It was  
something he'd said in countless other dreams, but it was still just  
as true.

"We ought to go," Willow said almost inaudibly. She sounded like she  
was starting to get over the shock.

Giles looked up at her. "Don't cry," he said, feeling numb. "It's  
just a dream. It'll be all right in the end."

Xander and Willow exchanged glances. Giles looked back down at  
Buffy's body, and reluctantly stood. "It's a dream," he said  
again.

"Come on, Giles." Willow took his arm and led him, stumbling,  
away.

It was a dream. Giles stopped trying to convince them of that-- since  
they were also creatures of the dream-- but he knew what it had to be,  
with the certain dull insistence of something that had happened too  
many times to count. It was a dream, and all he had to do was wake  
up. If he waited long enough, he would; and then he would be back in  
the real world, and Buffy would be there, ready to train.

He waited for the rest of his life, and never woke up.


End file.
